The state has given 3 Rivers Wet Weather its third $2 million grant to foster cooperation among municipalities in Allegheny County that face state and federal mandates to make expensive system repairs and stop illegal, untreated storm water overflows into area rivers.

The grant announced yesterday by the state Department of Environmental Protection will be used to analyze and make available data collected from a yearlong flow monitoring program. It is under way in Pittsburgh and the other 82 municipalities in the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority service area.

Asset, resource and financial information from all the municipally owned systems also will be analyzed.

Some of the money can be given to municipalities to facilitate consolidation planning.

John Schombert, executive director of the 10-year-old nonprofit, said the municipalities can use the information being collected to decide on cooperative approaches, including system consolidations, that might help reduce the cost of overflow control plans estimated in 1999 to cost them $2 billion and Alcosan another $1 billion.

"This grant will help us mine the data that's being collected and offer municipalities options on how to consolidate their systems if they want to," Mr. Schombert said yesterday at a news conference at DEP's regional office on Washington's Landing, formerly Herr's Island, in the Allegheny River.

An example of that kind of consolidation is the recent agreement by McCandless Township Sanitary Authority and Franklin Park Borough to have the authority take over operation and maintenance of the borough's sewer system. The municipality and authority received $50,000 from 3 Rivers Wet Weather to help with the planning process, which stretched over five years.

Another example is the systemwide flow monitoring being done by Alcosan that is saving its municipal members more than $15 million by eliminating the duplication of each municipality doing its own.

Cathy Curran Myers, DEP's deputy secretary for water management, said necessary sewer system upgrades statewide will cost $20 billion and innovative and cooperative approaches are required to prevent duplication and reduce those costs.

"Regionalizing the 83 different sewer collection systems in the Alcosan service area will result in cost-effective operation and maintenance of the systems and will effectively prioritize needed capital improvements," she said.

She said a state task force, appointed by Gov. Ed Rendell in March, is working on how best to help water and sewer authorities across Pennsylvania fund maintenance and reconstruction projects needed to meet federal water quality and health standards.

Previous state grants allowed 3 Rivers Wet Weather to survey and map manholes and sewer lines throughout the Alcosan system and develop the flow monitoring system required to implement the federal consent order the county authority agreed to last year. It requires the authority to control wet weather overflows by 2026.